Wallace Charles Smith was a participant or observer in the following events:

The Washington Times illustrates its column asking if Obama is a ‘black nationalist’ with this graphic of the Presidential Seal using the Black Panther raised fist and color scheme. [Source: Washington Times]The Washington Post reports that Shiloh Baptist Church, a well-known house of worship in Washington, DC, has received over 100 death threats after President Obama and his family visited it for Easter on April 24, and after Fox News host Sean Hannity, reporting on Obama’s Easter visit to the church, aired a video clip of Shiloh’s Reverend Wallace Charles Smith giving a speech in January 2010 in which he said some people espousing racial prejudice do so “under the protective cover of talk radio.” Smith tells a Post reporter: “We received a fax that had the image of a monkey with a target across i[t]s face. My secretary has received telephone calls that have been so vulgar until she has had to hang up.” Smith shares some of the emails he has received with the reporter, and says that he has not yet notified authorities. He is consulting with church leaders about what steps to take. The church was founded in the 1860s by former slaves. Hannity aired the clip on April 25, one day after Obama’s Easter visit. In the videotape, Smith said: “It may not be Jim Crow anymore. Now, Jim Crow wears blue pinstripes, goes to law school, and carries fancy briefs in cases. And now, Jim Crow has become James Crow, esquire. And he doesn’t have to wear white robes anymore [a reference to the Ku Klux Klan] because now he can wear the protective cover of talk radio or can get a regular news program on Fox.” Smith tells the Post reporter that he had been asked to give a speech on racism and that he “was giving some background on what I thought were some of the issues regarding race in this country.” Hannity compared Smith’s speech to remarks by Obama’s former Chicago pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (see January 6-11, 2008), whom Obama repudiated after learning that Wright had said the 9/11 attacks were “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” Hannity told listeners: “Wright’s contentious sermons hit the airwaves and forced Obama eventually to denounce his spiritual leader of more than 20 years. Now, here’s the twist: Dr. Wallace Charles Smith doesn’t think that there’s anything wrong with what Jeremiah Wright preached. I don’t believe that it is a coincidence out of all the churches in the country that Obama finds himself sitting in, why is he always in pews listening to such controversial spiritual leaders?” Hannity says he asked Smith to comment on his broadcast and offered Smith a slot on his show, but Smith refused. “We played his own words in full context but now it’s time for him to explain,” Hannity says. [Washington Post, 4/27/2011] The day after Easter, Fox Nation, the blog of Fox News, falsely claimed that Obama was the first president to attend services at Shiloh Baptist and extended the attack on Smith’s “shocking” sermons. [Fox Nation, 4/25/2011] Days before Easter, the Post, announcing Obama’s choice to attend Shiloh for the morning’s service, noted, “The church has hosted other presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.” An April 27 article adds that President George H.W. Bush also attended services there. [Washington Post, 4/22/2011; Washington Post, 4/27/2011] Washington Times columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner echoes the same questions that Hannity raises, asking if Obama is “a black nationalist” and calling Smith “a race-baiting black nationalist” who is “a more polished version” of Wright. “Mr. Smith lacks the bombast of Mr. Wright but peddles the same philosophy of racialism, grievance-mongering, and black victimology,” Kuhner claims, and cites a recent sermon by Smith decrying institutionalized racism as “evidence” before claiming that segregation and racism no longer exist to any real extent in the nation. Kuhner says that Smith, and by extension Obama, equate conservatives with racists who want to “perpetuate a watered-down form of apartheid.” Kuhner then claims that conservatives, not progressives and liberals, are historical champions of civil rights (see March 12, 1956 and After), and attacks affirmative action programs as perpetuating racism. [Washington Times, 4/27/2011]

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